


trying to not get hard during the zombie apocalypse

by keithsforeheadtattoo



Category: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Banter, Blood, Blood and Gore, Domestic, F/F, F/M, Femdom, Gen, Gore, Group Sex, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Mutual Masturbation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Other, Sharing Clothes, Tattoos, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:16:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/keithsforeheadtattoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>.<br/><br/>"hey, no smoochin', y'all," coach warns, the first of them to traipse through the tunnel. he points behind him indiscriminately with his thumb.</p><p>"what, all three of us?" says nick, dry.</p><p> <b>a million short NSFW monstrosities.</b><br/><b>(every survivor/every survivor, almost, at some point)</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	trying to not get hard during the zombie apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> there is no rhyme or reason to any of this all and i Simply Cannot Defend This lmao okay here we go

  
  


everybody on his team's been real nice so far and everything, but there's just nothing that makes him feel at home quite like a beard brushing against his ear, someone begging to fuck him cross-eyed. it's a thought-that-counts sort of thing since they both know they don't have near enough time, but the thought counts enough that ellis has to spell the national anthem in his head and focus on the sounds of distant chargers cuz he can't spare any extra bloodflow.

"aw, man, i gotta run in a second, man," he whimpers, like a devastating pun or something.

"i'll watch your back, sweetheart," francis says, and he's laughing but he's already climbing out a window.

  
  


it's slathered in depressing graffiti, but they get a whole subway car to themselves. the seats are so uncomfortable zoey sits on louis's lap. her jacket is so uncomfortable she just has to take it off. she unplugs headphones and presses play on an abandoned music device and gasps with excitement when thom yorke howls out of the tiny speaker. louis says it sounds like a haunted house.

zoey scoffs. "radiohead is, like... mood music."

louis's lap is so uncomfortable zoey sits on his face.

  
  


"c'mon... c'mon, fancy man," rochelle breathes.

nick makes a million faces in succession, heaves out something like laughter and manages a desperate "not--not if you..."

"not if i what, suit?" she says.

and he does.

  
  


he came down here with keith once. keith didn't know what "suck the heads" meant so it basically started a whole other conversation. rearranged his plans that evening, too.

  
  


ellis takes zoey's place on the saloon balcony while she takes a frantic restroom-hygiene-medical-food break. francis keeps giving him the stink eye every time he makes louis laugh but from the first time it happens ellis wants to do it a thousand more. not to piss francis off, ellis couldn't give less of a shit, his whole team's about to leave forever. he just likes louis's laugh something fierce. louis likes good music and knows shit about computers and making out. they pull apart every time there's a horde or francis turns around, both giggling profusely either way.

  
  


"hey, no smoochin', y'all," coach warns, the first of them to traipse through the tunnel. he points behind him indiscriminately with his thumb.

"what, all three of us?" says nick, dry.

ro and ellis give each other a specific gaze nick can't quite read until they're both looking at him.

  
  


"i'm just saying, mine are almost all from maximum security and i think your shit looks trashy."

francis stops in his cyclical tracks. "if you're talkin' shit about hell's legion, you better not be."

"all right," nick says, but he keeps laughing. he hasn't quit with the vest jokes, either, except to make room for jabs about goatees and fingerless gloves.

"man, it's only us back here for the next fifteen! are you askin' to get thrown up against the fuckin' wall right now?!"

nick makes a distinct face and says "uh, if you're offering."

  
  


coach grabs nick by the face real soft without speaking cuz nick hates to be asked, thinks it's "tender" and says the word "tender" like poison.

"my mouth's fulla blood," says nick as it leaks through his teeth, but that's the preamble to doing it anyway since blood is mutual and mundane all the time now.

he spits a small gory lake out onto the pavement, first, because he's a gentleman.

  
  


"awh - babe - wait," rochelle remembers aloud. ellis's hands leap out from under her waistband, eyes searching.

"you're good, i'm just, uh." she sighs in frustration. "you remember i made us all stop at that gas-n-go?" she says, her voice flattened out. loading a tampon in with a horde at the other side of the stall door wins the award so far for worst post-apocalyptic experience.

"mmmmh, man. ...man! ...sorry. that must... man." he shakes his head through a miasma of sympathetic realization.

"yeah, it's shitty," she exhales long, spiders her fingers through his hair. 

third place: a uterine vicegrip striking right as they tiptoed across a flaming hotel ledge. second place is now, now, right goddamned now when she hasn't been laid in like four months and the moon is trying to southern fried cockblock her into hell.

"for the record," ellis makes eye contact with negative space, "i've had... a LOT of blood in my mouth this week."

he raises his eyebrows, only to match what rochelle's do.

  
  


rochelle smoothes her palm between his legs, revels in the first pair of pants she's come across in miles that are fitted and aren't denim. soon as she laid eyes on him, she had an inkling they'd be a pair of pants he would come across too. louis moans with his hands in her back pockets. rochelle smiles.

  
  


"god damn you, god fucking motherfucking damn you to hell, you roadhouse piece of shit," nick snarls.

francis's smile is stained glass levels of beatific. "hey, don't mess that suit up, champ."

"you're an asshole! jesus christ. jesus christ. you're a fucking slimeball gin-soaked son of a fucking - fucking -  
HARDER, already...!"

  
  


she does it slow and only speeds up for every pair of seconds that footsteps tear by the door. they're in the attic so high up anyone would have to be real dead and real pissed off to even go there looking. still, she drags her hand out of the coveralls whenever there's muted voices underneath them. not for caution's sake, neither. she keeps teasing him about it and watching his face extra sharp.

"oh my god," ellis's voice breaks. says he's "gonna".

zoey skims her palm up his stomach and says "no you're not." 

she plays along the thick lines of his tattoo. watches his face.

  
  


"where did YOU come from?" francis whispers mockingly, all marilyn monroe.

louis smirks, then smirks more when the first time sends francis off on a furrow-browed tangent. it's no longer a good idea to have more than four survivors all making noise in the same place at once, apparently. 

"i only hear one survivor making noise," louis grins.

francis enters a complete pout. 

"are you jealous cuz i could still get post-apocalyptic digits?" louis says, his finger-snapping gloat souring when francis just frowns out over the water.

"i didn't even do anything, c'mon," he snickers into francis's neck, winding arms around his stomach. laughs loud when francis grabs him rough and mashes eager kisses like a cheat code into all the places he knows louis likes.

  
  


zoey's never had her hair braided before. mom never let her keep it long as a kid. she still wonders as an adult if mom had fingers that worked on hair, she can't imagine them tender and sorting.

rochelle takes zoey's ponytail out and weaves a fishtail that draws the wisps from her eyes. she kisses her forehead and fawns "ooh hoo, lara croft!"

"thanks," zoey says, and means a lot of stuff. 

rochelle's thumbs germinate a blush across zoey's cheeks.

  
  


they all develop hand signals for stuff that's easier to not say. coach comes up with a few, double tap on the right shoulder means lights out, squeeze on the wrist means steep ledge coming, a handful of white suit ass means something, all right, something that keeps changing but keeps happening.

  
  


"two-beer queer, huh?" nick chuckles in the shadow of a cap brim.

he has made it more than clear these are the only circumstances under which they would ever have drinks together. nick has a lot of soliloquies about the uselessness and improbability of things he keeps doing.

ellis says "nah, man, glass-of-water."

  
  


hot water and time being the sands of their hourglass, there are never any one-person shower shifts. rochelle and zoey get put together like rote, to make sure there "won't" be anything "weird" going on.

they're fucking before the showerhead starts.

  
  


coach doesn't mind any part of the single most representative experience he's had in a while of the fact that he's still got it. francis is pissed that it's hot out, he hates when it's too sunny but he also hates taking his colors off. he unzips his pants and sweats through the rest, removes only the gloves when louis glances between two pairs and says no way in hell. coach peels his shirt from sticking skin. louis pulls him closer by the gold chain.

coach's knee is shot, louis's leg starts bothering him, francis throws his back out again and says anyone who stops fucking him for one second because of it should be sorry. somewhere in the office a hunter growls. louis has to load his gun while he's coming.

they smoke through forests of inherited cigarettes.

  
  


the other man's form does seem... different, louis doesn't truly register until they're mashing mouths and there's a distinct lack of beard and awwww shit!

even after louis explains the situation, duly flash-lit, ellis just smiles the same placid way.

"uh, sorry? and also i'm still game?" he says, shrugging.

  
  


repurposed christmas lights and stencilled-on stars must be some goddamn georgian magic.

coach throws his arms up in the air. "i leave y'all alone for fifteen minutes?!"

ellis scrambles for his coveralls. nick redoes his own belt buckle in exaggeratedly slow disappointment. rochelle ties her hair back up, laughing and laughing and laughing.

"hey, man," she shrugs finally, "you said we could start on the sandwiches without you!"

he meant the motherfucking egg salad.

  
  


trying to not get hard during the zombie apocalypse is so, so, so not a problem nick thought he would have when this infection shit started. or a couple of months ago, either, if he'd been asked. but that's since he couldn't have predicted it would last so long he'd have to think about crap like morning wood, or that there would be mutants that practically fucking shibari you over a fourth-floor staircase, or that he'd make end-of-the-world teammates who still like him enough to whisper sweet disgustings in his ear in the ruins of an airplane.

  
  


"harder," he slips into begging before he reels it back in. "if you. wanna."

coach releases his vicegrip on francis's balls long enough to assure him he's been wanting to ever since that goddamned bridge didn't come down right when he asked.

he does it with his knee, hard enough that francis's lungs almost press flat. 

"thank you," francis shudders on the first breath he can draw.

  
  


it started out pretty vanilla-standard, they were laying on a bed and everything. hayseed knocked on the door like two minutes into the proceedings and rochelle laid a preventative hand on francis's arm when he reached for his pants. louis doesn't knock at all, just barges in and does a pretty quick one-eighty from shock to taking his tie off as a means of RSVP. the door doesn't even get closed after that. nick's the one francis thought might be icy about it but he laughs for at least a full minute, calls "room service" as he knocks on the open frame, responds with beautiful speed to simultaneous requests for specific items of clothing to go. coach swears a million different ways when he sees them. and a million more after he closes the door behind him.

"anything happen while i was asleep?" zoey asks innocuously in the morning. francis sputters out coffee he inhaled.

  
  


they're the only two in the saferoom. ellis covers over ro's head with a shotgun wedged through metal bars. she collapses against his chest once she's locked them in. it's not intentional, her limbs just give out the moment they're not in peril. he braces her but her boot catches his bad shin. he's gentle in guiding them to the cement floor. rochelle stays on top of him, dizzy with adrenaline, smoothes hands all over his sweaty face. they're both drenched. she tries to boost herself up with her arms but their hips make contact, she eases one leg over his and slides down again over him. again, and again. rochelle's breathing hasn't slowed down in maybe the past thirteen hours. ellis always kisses her so hungry after any close-call shit with the defib. she thrusts on him achingly through layers of rasping fabric until he takes his mouth from hers to pant that he's gonna lose his mind. rochelle jerks him off, her head against his shoulder. in less than a minute he spills over her fist. ellis always says her name like a hail mary, holy and undying and with salvation at the other end. he urges her closer by her belt loops. rochelle licks a running trail off the length of her index finger.

  
  


zoey and bill are always in the next room doing something serious. francis hurls tongue depressers into a slumped-over jockey like a dartboard.

"are they reading the map or drawing one?" he goes limp on the examination table.

louis turns around with a stethoscope swinging from one ear. 

francis blinks repeatedly, slow lids over cartoon bedroom eyes. "we gonna play doctor?" he drawls. stifles a yell when there's immediately cold metal all over his arms and neck.

"that's not how you use those," he giggles ineffectually before their mouths make contact.

  
  


"gross" is so nebulous now. it used to be kind of everything, public bathrooms and cards that aren't his and crying and money. these days nick gets excited to pick up leaking bottles of noxious vomit. swallowing still lives in some uncanny valley. he's cool if coach comes all over his face, though, as long as it's not in his hair, because gross...

  
  


"open your mouth," she orders, quickly correcting "not like a weird turtle..." as they both disperse into nervous laughter.  
`  
francis shifts.

"i don't have to do it if you don't want," zoey confirms. 

he does the telltale series of gestures she's seen trotted out before when he's embarrassed to admit to craving.

zoey halfway straddles his lap for the leverage and holds his jaw like yorick's skull.

"now open your mouth. like... just... a little. and hold still."

she screws the tube up from the bottom. zoey paints defined along his cupid's bow in crimson, promising "freakin' full-ass dita von teese if you can keep your lips right, francis, shit!"

  
  


the vote passes four to nothing as soon as they see the neon sign from the freeway. ellis pretends to be excited because syrup and whatever southern platitudes. not that taking over a waffle house isn't awesome in a genuine way, he's just thinking about other stuff, the whole way there his smile's lit from underneath with the memory of the last time they sat down in a restaurant with booths. it's the only thing he can dig up about being happy in georgia that has zombies and no keith in it. they looted the skeleton of a chick-fil-a, ate cold fries under constellations on account of the torn off ceiling. rochelle told him her middle name and this crazy-ass story about way back when she was a camp counselor. ellis kept kicking nick under the table all night til they had to sit next to each other. nick said it was so if he felt the fucking shadow of a workman's boot he'd have closer glock range but that sure wasn't what his hands kept doing.

ellis blares the riders on the waffle house jukebox while he clears the kitchen with pipe bombs. he throws a pointed wink while he's still dripping bloody and nick turns away in a rapid blush like his veins are barely under the skin.

  
  


"it's terrible," he chokes out with his whole face scrunched.

rochelle rests her heels on his shoulders one by one. francis opens a single eye.

"full sentences, come on." her gaze is metallic. "i didn't even ask for much."

he nods, he repents, ro always presses her lips tight when he's sorry sorry sorry. in daylight francis always says OH SHIT instead. she keeps the blinds open and the lights blaring because it's so dark the moon's out and if anyone comes by they'll see inside, they'll see him. 

"you were right all along it is a terrible vest." francis recites with his mouth real small, no punctuation. 

"yeah." she smiles. real small, too. "looks good on you, though, child." 

rochelle strokes the side of his face with her shoe.

  
  


they keep fucking talking about vampires. zoey leaves for like five whole minutes, does a loop around the building to see if they'll be done when she comes back. but no, yeah, sure enough, soon as she opens the door francis bursts out with a warning about dracula and ellis is incapacitated with a long hiccuping laugh. it takes her a while to notice his neck all covered in bites. and saliva.

  
  


it starts with them both shitting on the last season the mets played. it ends with trails of burnt rubber smoke and a white jacket draped around louis's shoulders.

in between they hit the jazz club, have cocktails and throw them. they can't get a room, so, supply closet, whatever. when they're alone nick's orgasm scream is ripped from a slasher flick. louis takes it like a compliment. nick takes it like he has, a lot, before.

  
  


ellis presses his head to the metal bars. ro's voice even bore his name coiled out of somewhere deep and needy. he turned halfway to look and a goddamn smoker tongue coiled out of somewhere too, for his shooting arm. ellis doesn't make the same mistake twice. he wipes his face with his forearm, buzzes with a dizzying full-body blush. outside it's so cold he can see his breath. inside he has to keep shushing the three of them every time they draw undead attention with their fucking laughing. or their, y'know. without the laughing.

his heartbeat lands louder than his uzi fire, but not the sounds of zippers.

guard duty sucks. or, y'know. doesn't nearly enough.

  
  


the ferris wheel starts clicking three-fourths of the way up and grinds to a halt by the time they hit the top. they're close enough to reach the med packs they came up here for, they've just got a whole lot of time now to use them. ellis's "gimme five minutes" is followed by a series of bewildered sounds and an update of "uh... fifteen!"

"oh, so cars and ferris wheels have different engines." nick says. "how 'bout that."

coach's smirk is weighed half down by metallic, groaning creaks and the branches of cedars reaching red fingers too closeby.

"fifteen goddamn minutes?" he watches ro and ellis, two specks on the ground pulling wires and pressing buttons. tries not to sound incredulous in case that bears resemblance to anxious as all hell.

"yeah," nick laughs through his nose, "we'll be here all night."

for a little while, it's been a blissfully uninfected quiet. nick is smiling when coach turns again to look. head propped on a fist, elbow on an irrevocably stained pants leg.

"how 'bout that." he says.

  
  


the only back-to-back guard shift they have together winds up being front-to-front real fast. they peer over each other's shoulders out opposing smashed-through windows. ellis's aim gets worse when his knees go weak and francis couldn't care less. more than that. he keeps inducing it on purpose. the finger move's always a widowmaker.

"you okay?" francis checks in multiple times on a few different noises. 

"yeah, oh - yeah. yeah. i'm. yeah. i'm sorry. i'm always - ah - i always - uh - never - quiet - "

"i noticed," francis says, but also he couldn't be harder.

ellis bites into francis's shoulder. whimpers how he's "tryna not fuckin' holler" but he "cain't not" and, well, okay, francis could be harder, evidently.

  
  


the first one is a poem. limerick style. super dirty. super personalized. rochelle sticks it in his pocket while she's putting a splint on his leg and only a few hours later he's pushing it back into her palm with sweaty fingers. her heart kind of vibrates. he swiped a library pencil and wrote out a verse of "if you want" on the back. every dude at every bar has misquoted "enjoy the silence" at her, she doesn't even like that one. pulling verbatim from an '84 album from memory pulls at something in her heart and all her other organs. rochelle chooses a few lines from "stripped" to commit to binder paper and his hand, and oh man does he let her hear him speaking just for her.

the next one is a slapdash acrostic. she goes full name. because she often does. and because it works out nicely to make the final A-S stand for  
"A+ at fucking...???" and  
"See me about ↑"

she stops getting the notes back after a while. which is cool, she's been more than compensated in all the unadulterated mouth she wants. she just thinks the reason was them graduating to the physical, thinks so until nick gets barreled over by a charger in louisiana and a flock of paper scraps with her gel pen handwriting scatter into the harbor.

  
  


ellis bolts the whole staircase, shuts the door behind him with his leg and shoulder. he begs to finally use his mouth all the ways they talked about doing if they had the time. louis guides his head by a fistful of hair. louis has always had a talent for effective delegating.

  
  


zoey taps her fingernails against the metal. both loops are still warm. it's probably from her own hands since she can't stop touching them but in her imagination they're freshly gifted. she keeps microwaving the memory.

rochelle pushed each one gingerly through, holding zoey's earlobes. 

"i got another pair at home," she said, and put her hands on zoey's shoulders to quell her attempts of i-couldn't-possibly.

zoey gave rochelle the house key she'd been too scared and sad and angry to throw away and said, "if you guys wind up in the area."

rochelle tried to say she couldn't possibly. zoey gave her pleading eyes and an emptying hourglass kiss once ro leaned their faces close.

zoey ties her hair into a high bun and admires her dour reflection in an expanding puddle. the earrings glint incendiary jagged beams.

  
  


they're trying to get shit going fast and rochelle is trying to live life uninvolved with doing anything dudes want unless she's reaping the benefits in equity if not doubles. she asks only for hard limits.

"aw... don't kill me," says francis, breathing heavy.

"it's all good," she says. "anything's good, just tell me."

he laughs, long, silent, shaking. "that was my list."

  
  


"all right then," coach picks up a cricket bat like chopped liver, watching nick's smarmy mug load shotgun shells. "first shot you motherfuckin' miss..."

coach slaps the paddle end into his palm in slow circles.

  
  


they try it out, for the sake of wish fulfillment and a position where clothes don't all have to come off. it turns way more leaning tower than eiffel, rochelle is too short, the fulcrums don't match.

"i promise i'll still totally rail your face," she consoles ellis while they recalibrate. 

louis strips the bedsheets searching for bugs or homocidal corpses or mattress stains. 

"all my georgian barbeque jokes..." he mourns quietly. 

ellis laughs so hard he isn't anymore while trying to explain to rochelle what a spit roast is.

  
  


francis lays funeral-still at even phantom noises. the first fourteen damn times it's something harmless, or in his head, or his personal favorite category, somebody else's problem. so time number fifteen he hears something gentle enough to probably not be lethal shift around behind him, he doesn't even slow his roll, just dreams up body hair and swimsuits and the last time somebody living touched him.

"mmh. you seem busy." zoey scares the heartbeat out of him. lingers in the doorway. "...need any help?"

francis sweats a tinnitus-inducing shame. "god, you know what i'm gonna say, zo," he shakes his head into a pillow.

she actually fucking says "fair enough". lingers in the doorway.

"but... go slower," she ordains, watching through a long silence. his arm starts up again, at her pace.

  
  


they find a cabin by a cold stream. single bed. but they've all slept on top of each other and in alternate shifts and in literally shittier places. he and coach get relieved of duty first. together. nick sheds layers of holsters at the bedroom doorway.

"hey, just keep it down, you kids," says ellis in full jest because he totally still doesn't know.

nick practically gags. he listens to rushing water and a smoker's strangled screams like spa white noise. this morning he was getting hung by the neck from a forty foot cliff.

behind him, on the bed, coach takes his belt off. nick glances purposefully back at ellis and leaves his jacket in a pile outside the door, a crumpled bloody tissue.

"this place has a working generator, sport. go flip howdy doody on real loud and gimme a few."

he shuts the door behind him like a saferoom. rochelle cackles under ellis's awed, arcing whistle. 

"i thought i was discreet," nick says. he hides a weary, snorting laugh in the fabric against coach's chest.

  
  


"awww," rochelle coos, tracing the cursive script.

"one of three," louis chuckles without humility -- orders "show her the other ones," and francis's pace is hampered with a new sheepishness rochelle drinks up. 

the second one says "louis", too, but it's on his ass. 

the third one, francis verges on a blush, is "kinda fuckin' sappy." louis says he came home with it two years back, still new year's drunk on january third and bellowing about his resolutions. OL LADY in big, ornately cresting capitals, and two dates, above and below.

"...'s'birthday." francis grunts under louis's gently expectant gaze, pointing at the first set of digits. "...'n'we met." plowing his finger into the second.

"i'm gonna die," rochelle speaks through the fingers of one hand. 

louis grazes an arm across her stomach to pat francis on the side. "yeah. he's cute."

francis trails a parade of exaggerated retching sounds all the way into the crook of rochelle's shoulder and stretches a foot out to brush louis's good leg in a pretend kick.

  
  


the only hard part is finding a large enough patch that's not already loaded from the dermis up. nick's used to inking people who won't stand still so that part barely factors in. francis is good about warning him, too, at least when the weapon he's about to use is something that discharges. francis, nick learns, did all the work on his skin that he could reach himself and boasts he never blew a dime on the pieces he didn't have a hand in. nick says to get fucked and he's charging by the minute, big boy. he goes old fashioned stick-n-poke for the shading when the power lines get gnawed down. he has to kind of hold francis's hand the whole time, literally, prying each finger apart from the others to get at the skin. nick isn't fully cognizant of it until he's finished the first one and has to ask for the second. francis deposits the gentlest fist into nick's waiting palm. they're both so clammy.

after it's done francis stares long enough the letters stream with blood. the left hand more than the right, he keeps clenching it til tendons struggle under the surface.

"i spelled it right, mm?" nick blares. he shuts up when francis only nods.

nick disinfects and wraps each knuckle until the angled lines of OVERBECK are all muted through saran wrap wrinkles.

  
  


rochelle knits their fingers to guide his hand onto her breast. she squeezes at his knuckles hoping for the transitive property. somehow she imagined calluses but underneath the gloves his skin is soft. coach fucks like a resting heartbeat thrum. rochelle still doesn't know his real name so she just screams oh.

  
  


"what took so long?" francis calls when the new team makes it back. he says it just to be a shithead, zombies are always what took so long, but the new kids all shift around on the concrete, exchanging weird glances.

"you sent us through the goddamn sewers!" colonel sanders bellows from the top of the steps, wringing out his suit jacket. 

zoey smiles wide and slow. "you get all those, uh, neck bruises? in the sewers?" 

her crew laughs in gradual enthusiasm. zoey scans for the culprit. bullshifter keeps going red in the face, but depeche mode was wearing lip gloss when they left and isn't now. friday night lights isn't in her list of suspects until he takes gloves from his pockets and puts them back on. 

"no!" mystic river defends, playing un-flustered. "i'm all fucked up! from! ...friendly fire!"

his whole crew cracks up inconsolably. 

"shit, is it too late to change teams?" asks francis.

  
  


nick's forearm hits his face with the elbow out. he's been roughed up enough times it's instinctual. he braces for fists but there are only fingers, febrile palms. nick loses his own hands in withering corn stalks and hole-worn cotton fabric. thunder smashes a wide ripple over the grainfield. ellis leaves viscid mud prints inside nick's jacket.

  
  


"for REAL?" zoey uses the same incredulousness she flung at rochelle about similar issues. only turned up a few hundred degrees.

louis shrugs. six years is pretty real but also nothing is real anymore and they're about to die every day, so, grains of salt.

"i mean... he... slept in your apartment and stuff?" she even adds an "ew" for good measure.

"he sleeps right next to you all the damn time!" louis snorts. "and yeah. in my BED. we signed a LEASE TOGETHER." he's just missing the flashlight under his chin and maybe a part about a hitchhiking ghost. 

"okay, i'm laying it on thick," zoey lets up, "but... for real. how... um. i mean... i know you... and..." she shakes her head helplessly. "...why?"

louis laughs into the emptying neck of a forty for a long time. he watches it dangle and then shatter when it greets the ground floor. francis saved his cat's life. twice, actually, if the time with the insulin shot counts. francis used to make dinner for them both after full work shifts back when he was a line cook. he got along so well with louis's mom and empathy-cries with movie characters and raises devout heavy metal horns in the direction of any joni mitchell song. francis is the only human alive who's been able to talk louis down from a physical panic attack. francis has big hands and pukes when he gets scared and somewhere in the ruins of pennsylvania is a first communion photo of him with his tiny doughy fingers clasped. on their first date louis made him laugh so hard at some awful story that he had to give him the heimlich.

"cuz he's a big fuckin' asshole," louis mutters, beaming.

  
  


she's so used to saying they don't have much time. zoey doesn't know what to do with the length of an entire sunset. zoey doesn't know what to do in a place so high up the dead are scant who'll climb it. her breath hitches like a gut punch every time he touches her on purpose. she finally asks for him, half prom date half christmas present, zoey doesn't know what to do with a boy with quiet hands who likes to talk. they kiss like they're defusing bombs. she gets to bite his lips and see under his hat. he eats her until long after every star's crested. zoey doesn't know what to do with a boy with inquesting eyes who comes in his pants from watching her whisper yeah yeah with her t-shirt still on.

  
  


a rack of thrice-filtered carbonated flavored spring water crashes and floods the first aisle six inches deep. doesn't kill the mood until enough maggotheads run through that it's thick with organ slime. coach topples the whole veganic shelf, it's easier to walk over than around. nick feverishly swipes forearm loads of sunglass displays from a checkout counter. he smashed three lightbulbs with his shoe when they tried it in the bakery section and that was the end of attempting not to trash the place. he heaves a rack of lighters and fucking whoops, it decimates the glass front of the cigarette case.

"break it, you bought it, son," coach laughs, pins nick's arms to the counter space he cleared.

the checkout's only theirs for five minutes tops, the store manager comes out of the stockroom with claws and beady eyes. he gets real rung up. 

less than half an aisle from kilometers of paper towels, nick smears his face in big sloppy streaks with his hands. it doesn't do much but ensure wet red prints across coach's back and shoulders.

"i think everything at the deli counter's dead," coach puffs, split up through the seconds his mouth isn't busy.

nick says "romantic." 

coach carries him over a shoulder. nick breaks a bunch more shit. because otherwise it wouldn't be a weekday. they tip a rack of pots and pans and it's tony fuckin williams. every straggling, armless customer comes at a stumbling jog. 

"i think everything at the deli counter's dead," nick says once he's put them there himself. his voice is all edged. from being all. edged. 

he grips the waist of coach's pants with all four fingers on the inside seam, draws him close with the gesture and not the pulling force. a fluorescent bulb pops over their heads. nick kisses him slow like it's mood lighting.

"this close to laying on grungy tile right now if it means we can fuck without dying." 

they always need some height-difference leverage and now the last long flat elevated space in the store is dripping corpse juice. coach hoists nick around his own hips like the kama sutra clasp and sways to twanging muzak.

"eugh... this is too... senior prom," nick complains. his smile's pretty damn first motherfuckin homecoming dance.

"you sure look like carrie, all right."

blood squelches and drips to the linoleum when their foreheads touch.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> some pieces removed/relocated 2/9/16


End file.
